A naukri.com initiative
Insider
1M
4
Image Credit: Insider
Trump's picks are giving Big Tech plenty of reasons to be nervous
- President-elect Donald Trump's picks to head the Justice Department (former Congressman Matt Gaetz) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr) show how he's elevating some of Big Tech's biggest critics.
- Trump's pick for attorney general, former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, has for years criticized Big Tech companies. He has advocated for strict antitrust enforcement, which aligns him with the Federal Trade Commission's current chair, Lina Khan.
- Trump chose Brendan Carr as his pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission. Carr has called some of the largest tech companies a "censorship cartel." Carr has endorsed banning TikTok, a policy that Trump himself supported during his first administration but has since abandoned.
- Elon Musk, who Trump tapped to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, has had a tumultuous relationship with Big Tech, as both a leader in the industry and a staunch critic of it.
- Vice President-elect JD Vance cut his teeth in venture capital, and has long been a proponent for breaking up Big Tech. Vance has called for Google to be broken up, and has repeatedly praised FTC Chair Lina Khan. It is now likely Khan will step down.
- Big tech companies like Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have drawn the likes of Matt Gaetz, Trump's pick for attorney general, and Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission.
- A number of Trump's picks have been harsh critics of the Big Tech industry. Trump's choices, some of whom are controversial even within the GOP, have not yet been confirmed via floor vote.
- Carr, who already serves on the FCC, wrote part of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. It's likely that Carr would use his new perch to try to find other ways to elevate Starlink and Amazon's competing Kuiper.
- Like Trump, Elon Musk has regularly railed against tech giants. In July, Musk accused Google of having a "search ban" on Trump because, according to a screenshot Musk posted on X, the search query "president donald" did not include Trump in the top two auto-completed results.
- Vance said that his experience in Silicon Valley taught him to be weary of Big Tech. He specifically called out Facebook and Apple, saying their business relies on getting users transfixed by screens that are loaded with ads.
Read Full Article
Like
For uninterrupted reading, download the app